


Homecomings

by Ael_tRlailiiu



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 08:13:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ael_tRlailiiu/pseuds/Ael_tRlailiiu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because I'm kind of obsessed with Pepper Potts, this fills in around the edges of some Iron Man 3 scenes. Contains spoilers, naturally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecomings

Goal one accomplished: they were out of the workshop and away from “distractions.” Pepper turned the bathroom lights on low. The awkward bulk of their conversation downstairs filled too much of the room, and goal two was to send it packing.

She turned the water on and let it warm up while she undressed, then stepped under the spray and closed her eyes. Tony spent more time than necessary fussing with the Ace bandage on his wrist before he joined her. Still feeling skittish, she guessed, and didn't ask about the bandage. Tony had never been lazy, and she thought that he was in the best physical shape of his life. A few years ago it had been vanity's response to the scowling approach of middle age; he took it dead seriously now, but wasn't always careful.

She did say, “What's this?” and ran her fingertips down his arm. Steam flushed the line of puncture marks a sullen red.

“Thing I was working on.” Tony perked up and started telling her about a gesture-based control system for whatever version of the suit he was on.

She interrupted. “So you're injecting yourself with what now?” Ghosts of old alarm crowded close.

“Totally inert, safe as those chips they put in dogs. Can't even feel them.”

Pepper confined herself to, “Okay.” The water's steady drum filled the pause. There had been a time when she rolled her eyes at the idea of custom bath fittings.

The silence got longer.

He said, “So.”

“Maybe we should talk in the morning.” Pepper picked up a bottle of shampoo. It was better than saying, _I don't know what to do._

Tony gave her a skeptical look and took it out of her hand.

She said, “We're both tired. No one is mad. It can wait that long.” She at least could use some time to think.

“You're not mad? Huh.” A bright citrus smell filled the room as he stepped behind her and went to work on her scalp. She could forgive a lot for the way he did that. Not that there was anything to forgive, precisely.

“I'm not, I'm...” She felt drained and worried. “We can deal with this. That's what we do. Deal with things.” He had told her what was wrong. There hadn't been any shouting. That was progress, even if it did mean that he was scared.

“So far.”

“Always.” She turned around. The light between them shivered as water sheeted over the reactor. She put her arms around his neck. “I love you, remember?” Messes and fearful bravery and all. She wasn't sure what he was thinking, but his hands found her hips and pulled her closer. The atmosphere was too weird for either of them to be in the mood for sex, but she thought the shower was working. Some of the the wary tension had left, and she felt him take a deep breath and let it go. When she pulled back far enough to see them, Tony's eyes were muddy and unfocused with exhaustion.

They went to bed. This time Pepper stayed awake long enough to make sure that he actually went to sleep, and her thoughts drifted.

She didn't like to remember New York, either. That helpless, awful hour in the air had only been the prelude. For weeks, the streets had been shaken by the thunder of imploding buildings too damaged to leave standing. The smell of hot metal, dust, and rot haunted the city, along with the constant awareness of the climbing toll as survivors gave up hope for the missing. It had been a relief to come back to Malibu, to untroubled skies and the isolated house.

She took refuge in planning. They would find some discreet help. SHIELD would find out, but if they stuck their noses in, she would gut the director with a nail scissors. She fell asleep thinking of Aldrich Killian. Of all people to appear out of nowhere. He probably still hit on his employees. At least he wouldn't be a direct SI competitor, from the sound of it. She should be able to avoid him.

*

One nightmare followed another.

Even once she stopped shaking, Pepper could not bring herself to close her eyes. She was too angry to sleep—angry at Tony for making everything so much harder than it had to be and at herself for snapping, with plenty left over for Loki, wherever he might be.

_Gods, aliens, other dimensions._ How were any of them supposed to cope?

She controlled her breathing, deepened and slowed it until she relaxed, only to find herself startled by imagined motion in the shadows. Damn it. She began again, lay staring at the dark windows and listened to the utter silence from the rest of the house. She had half expected him to follow her downstairs, but... stubborn. The moon rose higher. The ocean sang to itself. Pepper closed her eyes by an act of will. Morning would come soon enough. At least one of them ought to be calm by then, and they could figure out what to do next.

Before morning the question was moot; when the hospital called about Happy, Tony roared off without speaking to her. By nightfall, it mattered even less.

*

They found one of her suitcases floating a mile down the shore. Pepper turned away from it and walked to the shattered edge of what still clung to the hillside. Waves broke over the wreckage below. She looked at the cracked helmet in her hands, ran a fingertip over its battered surface. She could not have said that she felt any hope. She didn't feel anything. She knew this numb exhaustion well, and knew that later she would cry, rage, maybe swear revenge, and find some way to endure. For the moment, she didn't.

Lights bobbed on the water. At least a dozen boats stood ready to pick up the search as soon as it was light. Given the hours yet before dawn and the currents off the point, they might never find him. News crews crowded the upper driveway. They hadn't been allowed anywhere near the house, for which Pepper owed someone thanks. She could not have dealt with a microphone then. Utility workers gave up asking her to move back from the edge as they rigged lights, tested for signs of further collapse, and sifted out a few intact belongings. Pepper didn't look at any of it, kept seeing the whole place leaning out over the water, its last terrible slide.

The helmet chirped. She almost dropped it. Her hands shook as she turned it over and saw a light blink. She raised it and listened.

That beautiful idiot.

_...I can't come home yet._

She turned and looked at what was left of the house, gave a little hitching gasp and froze until the impulse passed. She was not going to cry about a damn _building_. She had to call Jim. That he wasn't here already meant that he was working and probably frantic. No one else needed to know. Wherever Tony was, it wouldn't hurt if the Mandarin thought him out of action. Pepper left the drop-off at last. She could breathe now, could think about other things that might need doing, and about a question that she wanted to ask.

She spotted Maya sitting on the bumper of an ambulance farther up the driveway, wrapped in a shock blanket and sipping coffee. 

Pepper said, “I think we ought to talk.”

  
  


*

She fell, and she died. She knew she was dead, that the impact shattered her bones in a hundred places, that there was nothing to _breathe_ surrounded by flames.

Why did it hurt so much?

And why—a tide of anger so strong that she barely noticed that she was standing up, that her bones were knitting straight and strong and that the fire was inside as well as all around her—why could she _hear Killian's voice._

*

She bolted out of bed and into a wall that shouldn't have been there.

“Pepper? It's January 17. Tuesday. We're at the hotel. Everything is okay.” Tony didn't try to touch her. They had both learned a lot about dealing with these.

“What...?” She blinked and put a hand to her head. The pain had already faded. She turned and focused on the faint glow of the arc reactor in front of her. “Tuesday.”

“Right.”

“Not Wednesday?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Good. I hate Wednesday.” Wednesday meant another dose to make sure her metabolism didn't go critical. It didn't hurt, but she spent hours afterward feeling like she was going to throw up from tension. Tuesday just meant a checkup. She put her back to the wall and slid down it. “God. No, don't,” she said and pulled away when he knelt down next to her.

“It's okay.” He held still.

“No, it isn't. It really is very far from okay.” Pepper wasn't sure herself if she was laughing or crying. Tony looked perplexed, so she decided she must laughing. She was sitting on the floor of a hotel room that contained all of their worldly possessions because he had been such _a goddamn idiot_ , and if she started yelling she might literally blow up, and her life was beyond ridiculous. Once she stopped laughing, she let him hold her.

It took three more weeks before he sat down and said, “Are you sure?” with no preamble. “Really, absolutely, entirely sure. No takebacks.”

She didn't need to ask what he meant. “Yes, I'm sure. I can't... I want it gone. It isn't worth it, what it's doing to me.” The fact of being invincible, the expectation that the world would bend around her, slid into Pepper's thinking in ways that appalled her. She didn't want the reminder of Killian's grin every time she got a paper cut, wanted to stop waking with the memory of a scream in her throat.

Even with all of that, she couldn't pretend not to feel a whisper of regret. She might understand Dr. Banner better than she used to.

“All right, just checking.” He flipped the screen around so she could see the latest test results. “Because I think we've got this licked.”

“Is it going to....” She bit her lip. That was a stupid question. She had already been through worse, no matter how bad it was going to be.

“The mice came through just fine. It's a slower process, and the Extremis itself will fight any adverse effects at the beginning. It'll take a couple of weeks.”

“Then let's get started.”

  
  


*

The photographer said, “Look to your left please... bit more... thank you... one more. Done.” She checked the results and nodded. “Thank you for your patience.”

“It's no problem.” Another interview, another photo shoot, another tower underway. Pepper was getting used to Beijing.

“We'll send the finals over for your approval tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

The photographer began packing her gear. “That's an unusual chain.”

“One of a kind.” In the week she'd been wearing it, no one else had remarked on the pieces of smooth metal spaced around its length.

The other woman's raised eyebrow said a volume on how nice it must be to have All the Money.

Pepper smiled. “Only sentimental value.” As if she needed evidence of the heart in her keeping. She went back to work, but kept checking her phone. At 4:23 a text message arrived that simply said _OK_. She packed up her things and left the office earlier than usual.

She found Tony in the hotel lobby. He might have been waiting for her to show up, since he ditched his conversational partner at once and met her at the elevator.

The doors closed. Text or no text, she had to ask, “What did they say?”

“Looking good—obviously. No sign of side effects, cleared for all normal activities.” To prove it, he picked her up.

She didn't even protest, ignored the scandalized glances from a trio of strangers when the doors opened. “Like you would know from normal.”

Later on she put her head on his chest and listened to his heart. It was such a tiny, normal thing to do that she laughed, but her eyes filled with tears.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't mean to... it's—this is good, it's just....”

“A little much? Yeah.” He laughed, too, silently.

“Guess I'll have to get used to sleeping in the dark.”

“I think we'll manage.” He shifted and pressed his lips to the outer corner of each of her eyes.

“Are you kissing my crows-feet?”

“Should I not? I figure I put them there, so....”

“You're not supposed to admit they exist at all.”

“I'll make a note.”

He was still Tony. He forgot things, behaved outrageously in public, and refused to consider evidence that the world didn't revolve around him. He knew nothing at all about shame and far too much about guilt, and he made her want to save the world.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“Let's find out?”

  
  



End file.
